Keeper of the Moon. Harley Jane Kozak

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СКАЧАТЬ smell just like the tea,” she said.

      He nodded. “The same, I promise. I gave you two. You take one now, you save one.”

      “I owe you.”

      Julio shrugged. “You take care of me, mija, so I take care of you.”

      She felt as if she was going to go into a coma waiting for Dennis to fill her drink order and knew she was fast reaching the point where she wouldn’t care about her job, her customers or the state of the world so long as she could close her eyes. She looked at the glass of ice water on her tray, took a quick glance around the bar and then, satisfied that no one was looking at her, popped a pill in her mouth and swallowed. She knocked back the water, placed the glass on the bus tray, then replaced it with a fresh one from the bar.

      Dennis came back with two white wines. “You okay, Sailor?”

      “Give me ten minutes. I’ll be fine.”

      It was síúlacht, all right. The aftertaste was unmistakable, and with it came the same memory of her mother giving it to her when she was a child. But now she wasn’t feeling the effect—

      And then it kicked in, like a hockey puck to the stomach. Within seconds she was wide-awake, ears buzzing. She could focus and move, and ten minutes later she was not only on top of her station, she was helping Lauren with hers. It was when she was ordering three Irish coffees for the bachelorette party that she saw, at the far end of the bar, Declan Wainwright.

      Her heart skipped a beat. And then another.

       Damnit.

      Declan had been watching her for half an hour, waiting for the moment to step in and get her out of there without creating a scene. He’d done a glamour on himself, nothing taxing, not full-on invisibility, just enough so that she wasn’t aware it was him at the bar, seeing him only as some random customer.

      And then she’d popped a pill.

      He’d seen the surreptitious glance around, her eyes disguised with colored contact lenses—where on earth had she gotten those?—that told him the pill was something other than aspirin.

      He was sure that no one else saw, but at that point he was locked onto her and could practically hear her thoughts: I hope this works. As an Elven Keeper, she had the Elven transparency, both sending and receiving thoughts telepathically. He wondered if she was gifted in all aspects of Elvenry, including their version of witchcraft.

      Damn the girl. She was tainting her own blood, clouding the best clue they had to whomever was killing the species she was supposed to be protecting. And she’d done it right before his eyes. He was angry enough that his glamour fell away before he realized it, leaving him openly staring at her.

      And now she was staring back.

      Sailor literally stopped breathing.

      If there was a man living who was more erotically appealing than Declan Wainwright, more her type, better able to take her breath away, she didn’t want to meet him. One was enough for this lifetime. When she was around him she wasn’t herself, and self-consciousness, painful for anyone, was particularly bad for an actress. It killed creative energy. Her attraction to him rendered her graceless, inarticulate and gauche—and that made her defensive.

      Breathe, she told herself.

      And why was he here? It was one thing to encounter him after hours at his own nightclub, where a drink or two could ease her awkwardness. Here she was at a disadvantage, dressed in an absurd French maid uniform—with sensible shoes—perpetually in danger of being yelled at by Kristoff. How embarrassing.

      Her cousins considered Declan a friend, especially Rhiannon, but Sailor had gotten off on the wrong foot with him years earlier, and then again a few months ago, and now every encounter seemed to make it worse. She’d pegged him as someone with a bias against actors/waiters, against any artist who wasn’t—yet—A-list. Which pissed her off.

      What pissed her off even more was how susceptible she was to his charms, like nearly every woman in L.A., which made her a cliché. She had no defense against his rakish appeal, his jet-black hair and sky-blue eyes bordered by laugh lines, the early warning signs of middle age. He was close to forty, Sailor knew, a decade older than she was, but he didn’t look it. His body, surfer-lean, was always in jeans and a T-shirt. And he had a timeless aura of … cool. As the owner of the Snake Pit on Sunset, he was a staple of the late-night club scene, as well as being a producer, entrepreneur and unerring judge of talent in the indie music world. A star maker.

      And he had all the confidence that came with that. He was used to women coming on to him, and she wasn’t going to join that club. He was never going to know how she felt about him, not if she had anything to say about it.

      What was he was doing at the House of Illusion? It wasn’t to see her, that was for sure. She wasn’t in his social sphere. But he was staring at her now, so she could hardly ignore him. They were acquaintances. It would be too weird. Damn.

      She served her Irish coffees, asked Lauren to keep an eye on her station, then wiped her hands on her apron, brushed her hair from her eye, and—heart pounding—walked over to him.

      “Mr. Wainwright?” The formality was tongue-in-cheek, acknowledging the prickliness of their relationship.

      Declan swiveled on his barstool to face her. “Miss Gryffald,” he said drily. The way he pronounced her name betrayed his Celtic origins. The guy had an accent that would make a tax code sound seductive.

      “I wanted to ask you—” Damn. She was shaking. “I’m wondering if there’s anything you could tell me about Gina Santoro or Charlotte Messenger.”

      “Why?”

      “Excuse me?”

      “Why would I?” he asked.

      “Why would you know anything about them? Or why would you tell me?”

      “Yes.”

      Did some people enjoy toying with other people? she wondered. Some endorphin rush? “You would know about them,” she said, “because they were both part of the club scene and you are the club scene, and there’s not much that goes on between 2:00 a.m. and sunrise that you don’t know or can’t find out. And you would tell me because you’re a shapeshifter Keeper and you were friends with my uncle Owen, and because I’m an Elven Keeper and it couldn’t hurt you to have an ally on my Council—a new one, I mean. And not to be ageist, but … a young one. One who’s not going to be collecting Social Security anytime soon.” She was talking too fast and with too much energy and saw Dennis glance her way.

      “I already have a number of allies,” Declan Wainwright said, his voice low. “And if you think trading on your family name will earn anyone’s respect, you’re not much like your uncle Owen. Or your father.”

      Sailor was now breathing heavily, her face burning along with the wound in her chest. “You know what?” she said. “Maybe you think that because I’m just a waitress-slash-actress I shouldn’t be talking to you except to take your order—”

      “You shouldn’t be talking at all, in a room that—”

      “—and that your money means you can afford СКАЧАТЬ